We are both doing something similar
Hi!
Just wanted to say that this is a nicely written and detailed explanation on char card. I am doing something similar in my repo to highlight and generalize character creation. I think the RP and creative writing community is plagued by poorly written character cards and scenarios, which in turn puts the blame on the language model, instead of the actual cards and the likes.
I will update some of my content when I have time (advanced character creation) and I was wondering if I can link this as an example of a detailed char card.
Thanks! As for your page's reference links, yeah that's fine. Go ahead.
What is your opinion on scenario in the scenario field? I know you said you keep it under the AN, but I found that a well defined scenario (at least the general backstory to where it starts and where it should go), keeps the story progressing. In my opinion, things like: Intro, ending, plot twist, etc., gives the model an idea of what it should churn out.
Useful field. It gives the AI model a better idea on what the general idea of what you want to accomplish in the current story/chat, and can help it pull from the internal sources it was trained on before resorting to things like World Info.
As an aside, the word Scenario itself is also uniform enough for what is being asked of it, to where it can be used for chats, story, or RP. Sometimes words like Authors Note might drive it into pure novel writing if you don't want that, which is why using something similar like Mental Note could be ever so slightly better for chats instead. Word choice can be a picky thing if you want to maximize output by small percentages.
For SillyTavern (unless there was an update recently I missed) their containers for characters, like persona or author's note, don't actually specify to the AI what those text blocks are exactly when it's being read. No starting identifiers like Persona: "Character is a magician who..." in the context. That's why I use hashes to bold things at the beginning of key sections that are separated. However, for some odd reason, their own scenario field does use an identifier to tell the AI what this specific field is when filled. Scenario:
But I've found bolding stuff with hashes or asterisks (some people like start and end tags) strengthens its understanding slightly when doing test swipes. So I have to use a different field, like the AN. Its just kinda whatever, but rearranging Scenario to update things, at least from what I've found with my setup, is probably a good thing, since it can now act as a current scenario or current quests in a way, instead of just overarching. Useful for keeping it more on track when changing scenes, or even the mood with genre tags, without having to dig into the card to change it.